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Tencent has spent $65 million purchasing a 20% stake in the Japanese game studio Marvelous, becoming the largest shareholder. Marvelous, best known for Story of Seasons and Deamon X Machina, plans to use the money to develop its current game franchises and roll out new ones to the Western market.

Tencent reported Q1 2020 results on 14 May 2020. Compared to the same period last year. Amid the pandemic, Tencent’s Q1 online advertising revenues grew 32%. Tencent’s online video subscription service, Tencent Video, gained almost 6 million new subscribers during first quarter of 2020, with 26% year-over-year growth compared to 19% in previous quarter. Meanwhile, smartphone games business experienced a sharp quarterly increase of 34%.

Sony Corp., via its subsidiary in the US, is investing US$400million in cash for a 4.98 percent stake in Bilibili. Bilibili established its business as an anime and comics site, and has since expanded to other entertainment categories such as video game operation and a UGC streaming service.

Tencent reported that online games revenue reached RMB30.3billion, representing a 25% growth year-over-year. International markets contributed 23% of total games revenue. This significant growth reflects the strong performance of PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile (which Tencent develops) in addition to the consolidation of Supercell’s results. Also, it was offset by the decline of PC client games; particularly Dungeon & Fighter.

The first quarter is usually the peak season for Chinese online gaming market thanks to the Chinese New Year holiday, and major publishers - namely Tencent and NetEase - introduce content updates and relevant events to accelerate growth of in-game spending and active users. The coronavirus outbreak in 2020 has made the holiday season more significant for the online gaming market.

After months of waiting, Tencent and Nintendo confirmed that they would be officially launching Nintendo Switch in mainland China on 10 December, 2019 just in time for the major Double 12 shopping event but with only one official game title available, New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe.

Mainland China's General Administration of Press and Publication has introduced a series of policies aimed at reducing video game addiction in children. This insight note is our initial view of what impact these policies will have on the games market in the territory.

During China Joy, Oppo, Vivo, Nubia and Xiaomi presented their latest smartphone models for premium gaming in Qualcomm’s Pavilion. Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon Elite Gaming, a set of hardware and software features that "transform premium mobile devices into gaming machines". The technology is available on these smartphone models, and is powered by the Snapdragon 855.

Sony’s press event did not spark great interest among gamers, partly due to the dispute surrounding Genshin Impact. The game looks very similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, from the graphic design to the gameplay. As the Switch will come to China in the very near future, and Breath of the Wild will be one of the first games to be released, the criticism was intensified. However, we have also noticed several other interesting games presented during the event that cater to the Chinese market.

In addition to the well-saturated PC games market facing cannibalisation from IP adapted hardcore mobile games, Chinese publishers have also struggled with a 9-month freeze on issuing publication numbers (ISBN) which stops monetisation of new games. With few new revenue streams to expand the PC online game business, the publishers have to shut down legacy titles which have little user traction and cannot gain much profit, in order to save operating costs.

The developer of PUBG Mobile: Exhilarating Battlefield – Tencent Guangzi Studio - has confirmed that it will suspend operation of the game in mainland China and that its new in-house developed game, Game for Peace will be launched instead. Players can update PUBG Mobile app directly to access the new game or download it from app stores.

Tencent posted total revenue of RMB 80.6billion ($11.7million) for the third quarter with a yearly growth of 24%. Advertising, cloud service and video subscriptions have become Tencent’s main revenue growth driver while its games business suffered revenue loss under stricter regulations by authorities in mainland China to limit negative impact on children.

Blizzard announced at last week's Blizzon event that it will partner NetEase to develop Diablo Immortal, a mobile massively-multiplayer RPG based on the Diablo IP for Android and iOS devices. Despite the availability of Hearthstone across PC and mobile platforms, this is Blizzard’s first game designed exclusively for mobile devices. The company confirmed that Diablo Immortal features new storylines that connect the end of Diablo 2 and the beginning of Diablo 3, and will include iconic Diablo character classes.

Tencent announced it will shut down its Everyday Texas Hold’em poker game on September 25 and start to issue refunds to players or convert the in-game currency to other Tencent games. The company’s spokesperson suggested that the move was aimed at diverting more resources to other games in its pipeline rather than a response to the intensifying government policy on online games industry.

The Chinese PC online-gaming market experienced a minor yearly increase of 3.2% in 2017, and that growth was entirely driven by Tencent’s legacy titles and Kingsoft’s JX 3 series. The PC games business of other major publishers suffered significant decline. PUBG, meanwhile managed to sell 17 million copies in China via Steam even before the game had been officially launched in the country, highlighting how battle-royale games have replaced MOBA in terms of market attention and industry investment.

Tencent is building a international version of its PC games distribution platform WeGame, which, for the first time, will put it in direct competition with Valve's Steam platform in markets outside of China. Tencent strategic target is to build its distribution capability outside of China. Meanwhile, Valve's Steam is not officially available in China, but it serves gamers on the mainland from its Hong Kong servers and many games are localised into simplified Chinese to attract Chinese buyers.

Perfect World announced that is working on ‘Steam China’, which indicates an upcoming official launch for the platform in China. According to the agreement, Perfect World will actively promotion the launch and marketing of Steam China, while Valve is to cover software authorization and tech support.